


the heart will always go one step too far

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, First Kiss, Framework, Friends to Lovers, Love Confessions, Unreliable Narrator, Unresolved Sexual Tension, cousyfest2k17
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-04
Updated: 2017-04-18
Packaged: 2018-10-14 23:02:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10545832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: Meeting Daisy while having no memory of who she is Coulson starts seeing her in a different light.(Cousy RomFest 2k17 - prompt: real/not real)





	1. we should probably get started

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Skyepilot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skyepilot/gifts).



He watches the strange woman go through the cabinets of her own kitchen like she’s not sure where everything is.

“Have you moved here recently?”

He asks.

She turns around, looking confused. Her hair falls on her cheeks, framing her face in a rather attractive manner. 

“What?” she says, frowning. “Mmm, I don’t know.”

And she turns around again, eventually locating two mugs.

She doesn’t know? Phil knows better than to question a HYDRA official, but the woman looks a bit - well, out of place. It's not just the house. She looked out of place the first time he saw her.

In all honesty, he didn’t think he would see her again.

“Black would be fine...” he says while she pours the coffee, but she has already gotten his right. 

“Yeah, I know,” she says casually.

When she came to his office at the school yesterday he assumed she was a parent or a guardian. A bit too young but she was what? Thirty? Technically possible. She looked confused, frowning at Phil's every word. A strange woman. 

Now he is in her kitchen.

He couldn't refuse to meet with her. It wouldn't be wise to refuse Hydra agents. Except he only knew about that _afterwards_. After she explained. She had asked him to come over to her house and Phil had blindly said yes. What did he think was going to happen? Look at her. Women like her do not fall from the sky like that. Not on him, anyway.

An official Hydra case. About Inhumans.

She said that.

It didn't make sense.

She searched his eyes like she was expecting him to know what she was talking about.

Then she asked for his help.

She had said that, “I need your help” in a way that suggested something bigger than she was letting on. No one had ever asked for Phil's help in his life, not with anything other than grading papers or helping out with the bake sale.

Back home after work he had come up with a number of explanations for the encounter. Agent Johnson had called his role the one of a “consultant”. Phil is not sure what could he do for Hydra on the matter of Inhumans that their many experts can. Maybe that was the point. You are taught not to ask too many questions. He just wanted to teach his classes in peace.

But then, last night, he dreamed about her.

And it was her, even though her hair was different and she looked a bit younger. It was her and she had been scared in the dream. But then again so was Phil. Yeah, he was in the dream as well. With her. Falling and falling and falling. Or maybe not falling, maybe -

He is about to tell Agent Johnson all this when her boyfriend comes home and interrupts them.

“Who is this?” the man says, gesturing at Phil but somehow not making eye contact. It could simply be a matter of security, he guesses agents have to be on edge all the time, and maybe finding a strange man in his kitchen is setting off all kinds of alarms. But Phil senses there’s something more along the lines of personal threat here. Ridiculous, of course, this man is young and tall and incredibly attractive, a bespectacled fifty-something high school teacher in tweed shouldn’t be something to be alarm about, if you found it in your kitchen talking to your girlfriend.

Agent Johnson clears it up, saying something about Phil helping her with the new Inhuman guidelines. The man looks unconvinced and keeps calling her “Skye”. Phil is confused, it did say “Skye” in her badge, when she showed it to him back at the school, but she introduced herself as “Daisy” or “Agent Johnson”. Maybe it’s a spy thing. She is the first spy he has ever met, he’s not sure what to expect.

She makes the introductions.

“This is Wa- This is Grant,” she says, hesitating.

Phil notices the muscles in her shoulders and arms tense.

“I didn’t know you were involved in educational stuff,” he comments. “Those geeks who make the banners?”

The woman looks at Phil for a moment.

“Not officially,” she says. “It’s something on the side, a proposal I’m trying to come up with. You know me, always trying to score those extra Hydra points.”

Both Phil and her boyfriend give her differently baffled expressions.

Luckily the boyfriend disappears into the other side of the house, muttering something about changing clothes. Agent Johnson follows him with her gaze, and when he's out of sight the muscles in her shoulders and arms loosen a bit. 

“I dreamed about you,” Phil says in a low voice.

The woman who asked him to call her Daisy leans back on the chair and flashes him a smirk.

“Wow, in front of my boyfriend. That’s bold, Mr Coulson.”

A boyfriend for some reason she hasn’t looked in the eye since he came into the house.

Phil shakes his head. He does glance over his shoulder for a moment, in case the tall hunk of a man returns.

“I dreamed about you,” he repeats. “It felt so real. What the hell is going on here, Agent Johnson?”

She leans forward again, reaching for him. For a moment Phil thinks she is about to touch his hand (he gets a weird flash, smell like blood, and something red, but not blood, and one hand over his, comforting him - _I don't want to be comforted_ the flash says). Phil swallows, too freaked out to react. 

Agent Johnson leans closer to him.

“There are things I need to tell you.”

 

+

 

_I dreamed about you_

She can't get those words out of her mind.

But she has to be cautious, smart, even though she just wants to grab Coulson and shake him until he remembers. She can't do that. She needs to wait a day to learn what he means when he says he dreamed about her.

They couldn’t talk in her house. Not with creepy Ward hovering about. She makes up some excuse, sends a message to May and gets her to cover for her. Either this May doesn’t care or it’s not the first time. Here’s an idea to cheer her up. She hopes that this Daisy cheats on Ward. She hopes she cheats a lot.

She picks him up and explains, or tries to explain, on the way. She sounds like a mad woman.

It’s weird walking into Coulson’s house. There are bits of the Coulson she knows scattered, and she is encouraged by the idea he is not completely different (there’s also a certain way he looks at her, that hasn’t changed, or the way he makes her feel like someone’s on her side, even now). Something about the décor, the taste behind it. She can't put it into words, but there's something here – yes, those looks like books Coulson would read, _Bartleby_ and Fitzgerald and Tom Wolfe – that feels eerily familiar to Daisy.

He seems embarrassed for a moment, when he lets her in. Maybe because he has seen “Skye”'s apartment, tidy and glossy and bright. His couldn't be different. A small, old-fashioned house near the school. The kind you’d imagine a teacher would have. Daisy finds it weird Radcliffe and his program gave Coulson a existence that seems lonely at first sight. no wife or children. Just him, teaching those disgusting propaganda lessons to teenagers.

“What did you dream about?” she asks him in the living room. He hasn’t offered a drink or anything. It’s weird thinking about Coulson telling her about his dreams - she has had dreams about him often enough, but she has never told them, they would have only made him worry.

“We were… flying,” Coulson - or Phil, he gets this annoyed look when she calls her Coulson - says, looking past her, trying to remember the dream. I think. It doesn’t make sense.”

She smiles, but she also rolls her eyes at him a bit.

“Lola. Of course you remember _Lola_ first.”

“Lola?”

“Your father’s car. 1962 red Corvette.”

“Dad had one of those years ago. He got me to work on it for a summer before I gave up. He never finished fixing it.”

Something clicks hearing that. About Coulson, the one outside. He didn’t finish fixing Lola with his father - he did it after his father died.

“Why were we flying?”

“We were escaping, someone was shooting at us,” Daisy says. She avoids mentioning it's the same man (well, not quite) Phil met yesterday. The Ward in this world might not be like the Ward in the other, so Daisy doesn't want to risk scaring this version of Coulson, or making him remember something he is not ready for.

He tells her about a second dream, about a dream with blue sand. That one is more complicated, more like a regular dream, there are still some memories there, but they are all mixed up. Luckly Daisy has visited enough shrinks and picked up a concept or two. 

“Do you have something to drink? I feel like we are going to need something to drink.”

Coulson looks like he is annoyed to give up such a secret, but he has a well-stocked bar (Daisy makes a joke about teachers when she sees it but it falls flat). She watches him pour the drinks. He doesn't move like Coulson. He hesitates and fidgets more. Moves more silently. He has a fireplace, but he doesn't offer to get that started for her.

“When you walked into my classroom the other day,” he says, when they are on their third drink and Daisy's throat hurts from explaining everything (almost everything, she still hasn't told him she is Inhuman). “It was... I don't know. Like we had met before.”

She snorts. “For once in the history of the world that is _not a line_. We had met before.”

“Mmm.”

He looks far from convinced.

It’s frustrating, because Coulson is the quickest person she knows, and she can still see that, in the brain working under his constantly confused expression, but they don’t have common ground now, they don’t share memories, it’s like they don’t even speak the same language.

But he’s still Coulson, so she has to try.

She feared she’d lost him at first. She can’t blame him, it sounds like an absurd fantasy. She’s telling him this world is not real, that his life has been fabricated.

If it wasn’t for his dreams he would never believe her.

And when she's done he only half-believes her.

That's enough to start the job. He might not remember he is Phil Coulson, or which Phil Coulson he is, but Daisy needs an ally, and this high school teacher is her best chance.


	2. bang!

A part of him still fears Hydra. How could one not? They saved everybody, and they have done so much for this country but, well, it’s Hydra. He doesn’t want to get into trouble. Agent Johnson looks like the kind of woman who would get him into trouble.

Going under the arches of this off-the-books facility, with the Hydra logo welcoming him, doesn’t exactly put him at peace.

“It’s a bit out of the way,” Agent Johnson tells him. “We’ll be alone.”

It’s his first time inside an official Hydra building since his loyalty exams. It’s definitely his first time in the shooting range.

It's an old SHIELD building, and not one they have bothered giving more than a superficial, hurried makeover. The old logo painted over, that's all. How a whole world changes in a few moments, as easy as applying paint. It's a bit out of the way. Or under the radar, Agent Johnson says. As a Hydra agent she is definitely welcome to use the facility, but bringing in a civilian would make their co-workers suspicious. They have to come to where no one recognizes her - “though that's tricky,” she admits, “because I don't know who I know in this world. You know?”

He doesn't and can't imagine how it feels like. Being thrown into someone else's life without a map, playing it by ear. No wonder she didn't know where the mugs were stored in her own kitchen.

Agent Johnson grabs a couple of guns - she says something about these being the ones “Coulson” favors. But he doesn’t catch up on what they are doing here until she literally (and he means the word, unlike his students, who continually abuse and overuse it) shoves a gun in his hand.

“I’m not doing that,” he says, leaving it on the table before them again. Even the touch of it gives him the creeps. Guns are for Hydra, guns are for the guards outside his school, outside the hospital on his way home, for the people on the tv. Not for him.

“You need to learn how to protect yourself,” she says. She sounds impatient. And bossy.

_She's always been bossy_ something says inside him. Voices that are harder to ignore every time, voices prying him away from his own sense of self. They have claws. He resists.

“I’m a high school teacher,” Phil protests.

“No, you’re not.”

He feels incensed at her certainty. A teacher... well, he might not be a very good one (the way Agent Johnson looked at the textbook on his desk, now he understands it was profound disappointment, what he saw in her eyes), but it's all he's ever been. This feels like one more thing that this woman is taking away from him.

And yes, she is giving back other things, but Phil never asked for them. They are big and complicated and scary, everything he has tried to avoid all his life.

“I don’t like violence,” he protests.

Her expression softens. “No, you don’t,” she agrees. “Coulson… no, he doesn’t like violence. But he understands violence might be necessary. To protect people.”

“That doesn't sound like me.”

It's because she looks so sad at those words that Phil gives in, reaching to touch the gun.

“What am I supposed to do?”

Her face lights up.

_It's one of your favorite things_ a voice inside a flash says to him. He's holding a watch but it's broken. For some reason that doesn't matter. Now he's back in the shooting range.

She lets him try without prompting, to see if he remembers something.

Phil copies what they do in the movies, holding the gun with both hands, narrowing his eyes at the paper figure in front of him. 

“Okay, okay, stop,” Daisy says, and when he turns to look at her she is trying hard not to laugh. He was really trying his best. She must read the hurt on his face. “No, I'm not laughing at you, it just reminds me of how I used to do this before _I_ learned properly.”

Phil frowns, unconvinced. It's hard to believe this woman could have come into this world other than fully-formed and formidable, hard to believe there was something she wasn't excellent at, at some point.

“I used to say _Bang!_ when I pulled the trigger,” she explains, sensing his skepticisim.

He thinks he remembers that, for a moment, for a moment it almost makes him smile.

“What should I be doing instead?” he asks.

She steps into the booth.

“First of all, you have to relax, you have to loosen up, your sta-”

Her hands touch his hips, gently grabbing his waist to lead him, change the posture. But Phil recoils, his body shrinking away from the touch. He can't explain why, he's not scared of this woman, just that it doesn't feel right, like it's somehow out of character.

It startles them both, his cowering away from her.

“Hey,” she says, with the softest voice he's ever heard. “I'm not going to hurt you.”

He knows that. She is a stranger, a _strange_ woman, but he didn't feel threatened when she showed up in his classroom. He felt a little threatened by the Hydra ID, wondering if he had done something wrong. But not by her.

She looks around. They are still alone in the shooting range.

“There are a lot of things in this world that will hurt you,” she says, coming closer, her hand skimming over Phil's arm but not committing to touch. “But not me.”

He looks down at his leg, for a moment he could swear it hurt. Daisy follows the gesture with her eyes, which suddenly turn very sad and very old.

“Yes, you are remembering that well, that was real,” she says, backing off a bit, her hand dropping to her side. “I did hurt you. Something was controlling me at that time, even though that's no excuse, I never wanted to hurt you. And I'm not going to let this world hurt you now. Do you believe me?”

If he believes her... is that a memory? Or does Phil Coulson, as he is now, halfway through remembering his own soul, trust this strange woman? He knows he is not the person Daisy is protecting now, it's this other Coulson, the one she knows. Phil wouldn't be worth the effort. Phil is not the one she wants. He should hurry and turn into Coulson already.

He takes the gun in his hand again, corrects his stance. He can feel his movements gain conviction this time.

“Like this?” he asks.

Daisy nods.

 

+

 

He looks like he is going to be sick afterwards.

Disoriented by shooting a gun for the first time, that can happen. It happened to her. All the ear protection in the world won't stop the vertigo, the faint feeling of seasickness after that first day at the range. Daisy remembers this. Did she look as pale as Coulson looks now to her? She has the feeling there's something else here, that something's wrong.

Maybe he remembers something? Daisy is not sure when he does, he doesn't tell her. 

It's sunny outside the shooting range and he wants to walk a bit. Daisy thinks it shouldn't be sunny outside, there shouldn't be good weather while Hydra is in control of everything. This should be a world of crappy, gray weather. No one has ever heard of sunny dystopias.

Coulson stops and turns around. He looks into her eyes a lot, in a way Coulson in the real world never did, direct, uncomplicated. Because here in this world she is just a stranger to him, and he wants answers.

“Did he... did I kill many people?” he asks, color drained from his cheeks.

Daisy doesn't know how to answer that. It's not like Coulson ever gave her a tally. She knows he doesn't take killing lightly, but she knows he believes in protecting certain things, any means necessary. Daisy always believed this, but it takes a while to get used to the idea that you yourself might be the person doing the “any means necessary”.

“Some,” she replies. “I've killed people too. It doesn't feel great, but it doesn't make you... it doesn't make you a bad person, Phil. It doesn't taint your soul or whatever. I've seen you kill a man to save thousands of lives. But I've also seen you choosing not to kill a man to save thousands. We always try to do what's right, whatever that is.”

She tries to tell him that they are in the same boat, that he never did anything she wouldn't. 

It looks like it's just adding to his distaste.

But it's also... working? The man who has just let her teach him how to shoot, so he can help her get everybody back to where they belong, this is not the same man she met in a classroom two days ago. He is not Coulson, but he's looking more like him.

Maybe she should give him a break.

“It's okay,” she says, touching his shoulder. This time he doesn't flinch or shy away from her, which is a relief. “You are doing fine. I'm sorry it's so hard on you. You should rest now. Let me get you something you like. Strawberries?”

That's stupid, it's just the first thing that popped into her mind, like “ _what does Coulson like? He likes Captain America. And strawberries. And me_ ”.

“How do you know I like strawberries?” he asks, tensing up, like it's supposed to be this great secret.

“I told you. We know each other.”

“You said we worked together.”

Daisy blushes a bit. “I guess we're also friends.”

It's simpler than it sounds. Coulson talks, she listens. She remembers. She guesses the fact Coulson _doesn't_ is the problem here.

“The kind of friends who know about strawberries?” he asks.

“Our line of work doesn't leave much room for a personal life,” she explains. Coulson is a private guy, but even so, they've been living under the same roof for years. She could tell him this, but it sounds a bit weird right off the bat.

“Our line of work,” he repeats, pausing on the words, prodding them. “You said we save the world.”

Daisy smiles.

“ _You_ save the work. I just make earthquakes with my powers.”

He looks at her. Again, the direct, simple look. She misses Coulson's way of looking at her.

“I don't think that's true,” Phil says. “I think you're being modest. You feel like a fake, so being modest is easier.”

Her smile widens, not because of the words, but what they mean.

“See? It works both ways. You know stuff about me too.”

That calls for a celebration.

Strawberries.


	3. please remember

“What the hell was that?” Phil asks, once he has recovered his voice, once he has stopped coughing. His throat still aches, like he has an invisible noose around his neck.

“That was... a failsafe,” Daisy says, crawling until she can rest her back against the doorframe. She has blood all over her arm and shoulder.

“He shot you,” Phil says, not entirely convinced he actually saw all this happen.

Daisy gives him a smirk. Is this the time?

“Once I shot him _four_ times,” she tells him. “I still have the upper hand.”

How can she make a joke out of...?

Phil thinks he might never be able to breathe properly again in his life.

He turns from Daisy and looks at the body of Hydra agent Grant Ward.

“Is he dead?” he asks.

She did this with her own hands?

“God I hope so,” Daisy replies. “We'd be in big trouble otherwise. _Bigger_.”

“I’ve never seen a body,” he says.

“I’m sorry,” she says, touching his arm.

He has no experience with death.

He's never had a big death in his family.

The only violence he's seen himself was the kind of corner-of-your-eye flash that is easy to ignore, because the world wants you to ignore it.

He’s read about death in history books. He teaches them. Warns the kids about the many ways an Inhuman can kill you. But in the end it wasn't an Inhuman who tried to kill him.

It was the man who had received him as a simple guest in his house, only a couple of days ago.

It doesn't feel real.

And yet...

He has the feeling this is not the first time he's seen this same man die.

“He didn't even look human,” he says, still looking at the body. “The way he attacked us...”

He touches his own neck, the skin still tender there. When he looked at the man's eyes, as he was choking Phil, he saw nothing there. Absolutely nothing. And that terrifies him more than anything.

“He wasn't human,” Daisy says. She reaches with her good arm and grabs Phil's face, making him turn his glance towards her. “No one in this world is. Except us, and a couple of other people.”

“I don't-”

“Those people need our help,” she tells him, in a tone so decisive that it could drive any man to action. “You don't know who you are but I do. And you are someone who would risk anything to help others.”

Phil thinks she has just offered an accurate description of herself, from what he has been watching these past few days.

“Are you hurt?” she asks all of the sudden.

For a high schol teacher? Yeah, he's pretty hurt, having received a couple of very powerful punches and someone taller and stronger than him tried to strangle him. But he guesses for the spy he is supposed to be he's just peachy.

“I'm fine.”

She reaches her hand again, but this time for support, to get up. 

“I kind of need your help here. _Phil_?”

The name she says his name shakes him out of it. He nods, his hands going to her injuries faster than his mind can catch up, like they’re replaying a memory.

 

+

 

She slips in and out of consciousness through the trip.

“Where is this?” Coulson asks after she gives him the address.

“A safehouse.” She sees his expression. He's learning quickly, regaining his healthy skepticism. It's almost painful to witness. “No, Hydra doesn't know about this one, because SHIELD didn't know. You didn't know. It's one of mine.”

“What did you need your own safehouse for?”

She turns towards the car window, pressing her cheek against the glass.

There are so many things she still has to tell him. He's risking his life, and he doesn't even know who she is. What she is. She'll tell him. Soon. She decides.

“Can we talk about that later?”

“Of course,” he says, focusing on the road again.

He doesn't exactly sound like Coulson yet, but there's a gentleness there. Something that makes his voice feel familiar again. 

She asks him to stop and buy some food, because she's going to need her energy (she doubts Ward going psycho is the one failsafe in place). Every time she is about to fall asleep Phil takes one hand off the wheel and shakes her gently by the shoulder, to keep her awake.

Daisy thinks this might have saved her life.

 

+

 

He can’t understand how she is keeping a straight face - there’s a hint of a wince there, but also the feeling that she has practised how not to let pain show on her expression. He’s not sure if this is an impression he is having or a vague memory. He is not sure of anything anymore. Well, he’s sure that is he had the gaping wound on the arm this woman has he would have passed out a while ago. Hell, he can feel himself looking queasy just looking at it.

“I’m not sure I know what I’m doing,” he tells her, pressing the gauze to where the blood keeps coming from (not in worrying amounts, but it’s not exactly stopping either).

“It’s fine,” she says, smiling a bit. He doesn’t get it, that she should be giving out reassuring smiles when she’s the one hurt. “You’re actually very good at this, I’ve seen you. Just… trust your gut.”

He wonders if he has done this before, with her, in the world… the real world… no, he still finds it hard to imagine this world is not real, that reality is somewhere else. Deep down he always knew she wasn't lying, but knowing it and letting himself accept it are two different things. Maybe if he concentrates on what's in front of him...

“I’ve never treated more than scratches,” Phil says. Funny how his uneventful classroom life had felt like a good thing until now. Now it makes him feel inadequate. “Maybe you should have kidnapped Mr Willis, the PE teacher, he has more experience with this stuff.”

“I didn’t kidnap you,” she protests.

“I know, I know, it was just a joke,” she says. He has actually managed to stop the bleeding somehow. He feels oddly proud of it, and it prompts him to talk. “I’ve always felt something about my life was off. Like it was too neat. But I thought feeling like that was normal. When you showed up and told me… what you told me. It made more sense than the other thing.”

“I know it’s been years for you, your whole life,” she says. “But you’ve only been connected the Framework a couple of days, your body is still fighting. That’s why it felt like that. There’s still time, you can still remember.”

He nods and for a moment they stay in silence, Daisy watching him as he finishes bandaging her shoulder.

“Your clothes are ruined,” he observes, glad he had the good sense of buying some clean t-shirts at the gas station.

“Yeah...”

Suddenly Phil sees her, Daisy, Agent Johnson - but somehow he doesn’t think that’s her name - she sees her standing there, but suddenly it’s not a bed, and her hair is different, and her clothes are different and instead of a wound on her arm there’s a hole in her stomach and blood pouring out and staining her clothes. Phil looks down, his hands are covered in red, and suddenly he is holding this woman in his arms, a strange light flooding his vision.

“Coulson!”

Her voice is firm and she is shaking him with her good hand.

Phil blinks himself back to the motel room.

He is not holding anyone, he is standing next to the bed, and Agent Johnson is of course not bleeding out from a gunshot to her stomach.

“Hey, where did you go?” she asks.

He feels himself shaking a bit. “I saw you…”

“You remembered something?”

“You were… bleeding… dying.”

She looks away for a moment, when she stares back at him her gaze is more opaque, complicated. 

“That was real,” she says.

He can still taste it in his mouth. Whatever happened he – or the real Coulson – had never felt so scared in his life, so absolutely hopeless, helpless.

“It wasn’t just a memory,” he tries to explain, to himself, thinking out loud, scared of closing his eyes even for a moment, in case the image returns. “I got this strange feeling like… like it was all my fault.”

Agent Johnson lets out a breath. “It wasn’t your fault,” she says. “But the you in the real world… yeah, he would believe it was his fault.”

 

+

 

She can’t sleep, but this Coulson doesn’t seem to have the same problem. He’s had a long day, she understands. And a high school teacher is not used to so many big ups and down in one day. Or to being chased by the murderous software of a mad scientist. 

She told him about getting shot in Italy, made it a tale of bad guys and daring gestures, told him he saved her life. Against all odds and everyone's better judgement he managed to save her life. “Like tonight,” she said, pointing at her injuries, assuring Phil she couldn't have done it without him. She wasn't lying.

Phil slipped, quietly, almost humble, into sleep right there, on the chair. She almost envied him when he did.

But it also meant he left her alone.

She moves under the covers, closer to him, studying his face in the darkness. Trying to find the differences. Apart from the glasses, which he had left on. They gave him this air of harmlessness, and ignorance, Daisy doesn't like. Mainly because he looks less like Coulson with them. She swears there was another moment tonight, when he was looking at Ward's dead body – Daisy could have sworn he remembered.

But his expression had closed off again into this salt-of-the-earth obedient everyman. Until next time. It comes and goes but Coulson keeps slipping away from her grasp.

“I’m going to need you to remember who you are,” she says, softly.

She thinks he moves in his sleep, struggling with something, but maybe that's just her own wishful thinking. She wants to believe whatever is between them is stronger than Radcliffe's programming, but that seems both naive and arrogant. 

She just misses him. 

It's funny, because she walked away, stayed away from him for six months and now she misses him. Maybe she deserves it all.

“Please, Coulson,” she pleads with him, even though he can't hear, and she feels her eyes begin to wet a bit for the first time since she arrived at this world, her heart breaking a bit. “Whenever I’ve asked for your help, you’re always there. You have to remember that.”

He doesn't of course. He is just asleep, breathing evenly and quietly and at least he's safe and alive. Daisy sighs, a bit annoyed at her own pang of sentimentality. Sentiment will not get them out of here. 

She gets out of the bed, decides to take the couch on the the other room. She doesn't want Phil to wake up to some strange woman with bloodied clothes. With some difficultly – once the bandage settled the arm she can't move it at all – she throws the bed covers over him, so he won't get a cold during the night. Is it night? She loses track of time easily in this world.

 

+

 

He could escape now if he wanted, while she is asleep, cold out from the pain of the injuries and the medication. From not sleeping (she told him she was afraid of falling asleep in _this world_ ). Their relationship so far has consisted of her dragging him from one place to another (and him having strange dreams about her) but he can’t honestly say he is kidnap victim.

He could leave now, if he wanted. But he doesn’t.

He looks at her sleeping face. He has the feeling he has watched her sleep before. When she was hurt. And when she was sad. He remembers her behind a glass wall, and he remember wanting to reach out inside and touch her, comfort her. The vividness of the feeling disturbs Phil. He doesn’t really do extreme feelings. This memory tastes like yearning. Why did he want to open that glass door so badly? Why was he so glad she was alive? He can’t remember the sequence of events leading to the feeling, the moment. 

This has become the biggest mystery of all. Not his life as a SHIELD agent, someone who shoots and kills and protects people. This young woman here and what she means to Phil Coulson has become the center of what haunts him. She wouldn't say much.

Why did she leave the bed in the middle of the night, injured? Why is she here, uncomfortable lying on the couch, with a thin blanket over her? Phil doesn't get it. He doesn't get her. He has this intimation that maybe the other Coulson does.

But the problem is... he doesn't understand that other Coulson either.


	4. are we...?

“We didn't buy much stuff on the way, but I managed something,” he tells her. Daisy smiles. He might not remember Coulson, but he is Coulson.

She puts the food away for a moment and gestures for him to sit next to her. She feels like holding his hand or something, do anything to make this go eaiser, but she doesn't, and realizes it might actually make things worse.

She tells him who she is.

Not Agent Johnson.

Not her colleague, a fellow SHIELD agent.

Not a friend.

Who she is. _What she is_.

An Inhuman.

It takes her a long time to explain, then again the road she took to Terrigenesis wasn't the short one, precisely. Daisy realizes she hasn't exactly talked about this with people (she could, for a bit, with Andrew, but that didn't last; and then she wanted to, with Lincoln, but he only said all the words she feared to hear, so she stopped trying), how it had felt to transform. She tells Phil how scared she was and then how proud she was and then, after Hive, how she didn't know how to feel about her own existence anymore. At some point she realizes she is telling Phil all the things she wishes she could have told Coulson.

There are excuses and reassurances. We are not dangerous, she says. She searches Phil's eyes with every sentence, because she knows what's in his textbooks, she knows what he tries to drill into his students' minds day after day. She searches his eyes for the fear or revulsion that would break her heart. But it's not there. There's slight apprehension (she can deal with that), confusion (she should have told him this before, she knows), and a bit of obvious curiosity and fascination (so you are Phil Coulson after all...)

When she finishes she wants to wait for Phil to speak, doesn't want to pressure him, but it's obvious that's not happening soon.

“Are you okay? Did I freak you out?”

He seems to think about it, like he doesn't want to give her a superficial answer. His glasses rise on the bridge of his nose when he frowns.

Daisy is worried he still feels uncomfortable about being in the same room, being alone with her. When she transformed Coulson was cautious (for her benefit more than the others') but he never showed a hint of fear (he should have), and he never seemed to feel more at odds being alone with her than before. He knew she had changed, but he acted like he knew part of her hadn't changed at all, and that was comforting. 

“You've told me this before?” Phil asks, looking like he's reaching back for some memory just out of grasps. There, his face seems to say, I can touch it with my fingertips.

“Not exactly. I was hiding it, you found out.”

“People wanted to hurt you when they found out,” he comments, that look on his face he gets when he remembers something, like it gently comes back to him.

People wanted to take me another planet, Daisy thinks. To this day she's not exactly sure how she escaped that fate.

“You protected me,” she says.

Phil seems more surprised by that than by learning she's an Inhuman.

“All this time they've made me think people like you were that bad guys,” he says.

She shakes her head. “That's fake, you'd never really believe that, they put it in your brain, that's not you.”

He closes off a bit, like every time Daisy reminds him his life – the good, the bad, the everyday things of it – is a fake.

“Then.. we're the bad guys?” Phil asks.

There's something so distressing about the way he says it, it makes Daisy remember how he looked when he found out Hydra had infiltrated SHIELD, when he found out he had been working for Hydra, without knowing it, all along, years, his whole life.

This time she does reach out and touch his arm comfortingly, hoping it doesn't scare him.

“No, you're not,” she tells him. She doesn't tell him that the only way they could ever make Phil Coulson into a bad guy is by changing him into a different person, because well, this is the different person, it would mean he is the bad guy. But he's not. He didn't have a choice in this.

“You should eat a bit,” he says, gently changing the subject.

Daisy nods, because yeah she wants to make sure he's okay with all this, but the truth is she's starving.

“You didn't have to do that,” she says, pointing at the sandwiches he's prepared for her, all neat-looking on the tray. He turns his face away. Is he embarrassed? It's cute, she doesn't think she'd seen the real Coulson blush. 

“It's fine.”

“I'm the one who kidnapped you, remember?” Daisy protests. “I should be the one providing the meals.”

“You were busy bleeding to death. Remember?”

Oh god he sounds so much like the old Coulson, the real Coulson, that she could cry.

“Are you still okay?”

“I think so. A week ago I would have been terrified of being alone in the same room with an Inhuman. But him... I mean, the person I really am, I don't think he has a problem with it.”

He definitely doesn't, Daisy thinks, thinking, gloomily more than touched, that Coulson has put his life at risk for her people more than once. It's not his fight and yet...

She starts eating to hide her distress, her hope that this Coulson has a little more sense or a little more self-preservation instinct.

It's delicious, of course it is. Delicious in the simple way the stuff Coulson makes it's delicious. 

She almost finishes before she realizes.

Now there's a new take on the whole “eating your feelings” cliché.

“I’m glad you are just as good a cook here as in the real world,” she says, smiling.

“Did I cook for you, out there?” Phil asks.

“A couple of times,” she replies. “There was a spectacular grilled cheese you made for me once.”

He shifts in his seat on the couch.

“ _I did that_?”

He looks confused. Maybe he thinks she’s stupid, thinking mere grilled cheese is memorable enough to be bringing it up now. To hold on to such a small memory.

Yeah, that must be it. He must think she's silly and sentimental.

 

+

 

The wound on her arm takes two days to heal – more or less heal, and a part of Phil is surprised at the familiarity of her stubborness bravery, and how comforting that feels.

He knows they'll have to part ways afterwards.

It's too risky to stick together now.

Phil thinks she is going somewhere dangerous, and doesn't want to drag him with her.

“I need you be my backup,” she tells him.

He's the only one who can. He is the only one who remembers enough. The one who knows this world is a lie.

“I need help to break us out of here,” she adds. “But if I get caught you're the only one who knows what's going on.”

A week ago that sort of responsibility would have sent him into a panic. It would make him adjust his glasses furiously and fidget with his tie. Well, he still has the glasses, but suddenly he realizes he's no longer wearing a tie. 

“You can do it,” she repeats. “I trust you.”

He remembers saying that to her, saying _you're one of the few people I know I can trust_ , right before leaving her alone. That's how he knows she's going to leave him alone.

He lets her rest, lets her take the bed again, and lets her eat the little food they have. Meanwhile he tries to remember, tries to be of use to her.

Some memories come back to him during those two days, during the lull in them, their quietness – especially compared to what had come before, fighting and blood and running. The other him is used to fighting and blood and running, he thinks he knows this, but Phil is going to need a breather.

The dreams get stranger. He remembers going to his father's funeral, but that's absurd, his father is alive and well. He dreams and wakes up clutching his left arm, knowing that in the real world it's gone, but also remembering all of the sudden the pain of losing it.

Talking to Daisy it's the things he has in common with the other Coulson (he has begun to think about him as _Daisy's Coulson_ ) the ones he finds creepiest: the antiques, the jazz, the food...

Her revelation that in the outside world Phil had cooked for her – and what he had cooked for her – still intrigues him. It invites the next question, one Phil hesistates to make.

 

+

 

She thinks he looks sad to leave the safehouse. They've spent the last couple of days here, Daisy recovering, Coulson trying to remember.

From time to time he would come up with something, a shred of a memory, maybe just an image, and he would ask Daisy if it was real, and what it means. Some of it disturb him, some just puzzle him. Daisy can't imagine a life more different to Coulson's than this the Framework chose for him. Whenever Daisy talks about one of the feats she saw Coulson do (“I didn't see but they told me you just shoved your hand inside that guy's chest...” “I don't know how you managed but you got inside the plane to get...” “A two-way mirror! Imagine that, I was so wrong...”) he would narrow his eyes behind the glasses and look like he disapproves, like he thinks this other Coulson is too reckless and he doesn't really like him.

But at the end of it he seems hesitant to let her go out alone. Daisy smiles, because that's something the two Coulsons have in common.

“Can I ask you a question?” he says as Daisy moves her arm a bit, still hurting (a lot), but no longer useless.

He's so polite. He keeps touching the collar of his shirt nervously. Hey, when did he lose his tie?

“Shoot,” she says, ready for another one.

Phil pauses. He's been asking questions for days (she joked he made her feel like the teacher, actually), about his real life, Daisy is not sure why he seems so unsure all of the sudden.

“It's okay,” she encourages, when he still stays silent.

“Out there in the real world, are we…?” Phil starts.

“What?”

He gestures.

“Are we…?”

“Are we what?”

“Are we in love?” he finally asks.

The first thing she thinks is that is very like Coulson to put it in such a way - _are we in love?_ \- somewhat naive, genuine. Not lovers, not dating, not even a couple. In love. _Wow_.

“Oh. No, no. We’re friends,” she explains. “You’re… well, not really my mentor, but you supported me, believed I was worth something. You're very important to me.”

He meets her eyes. He seems a bit confused – no, he seems like he doesn't completely believe her.

“It’s just that all the things you have told me about, about me in the real world, and you, you made it sound like we are close.”

“We are,” Daisy hurries to say. “We’re very close. Just… not like that.”

She says it sadly, because she can't imagine anything brighter, happier. Being in love with Coulson and Coulson in love with her. That would be something. She is not sure what they are, friends doesn't ring true for her some times. And if she hadn't learned to think of “love” as such a limited term, she'd say Phil Coulson is the love of her life.

But no, out there, in the real world, they're not in love.

 

+

 

They figure out a way to wake them up, on the other side.

Daisy found her friends, she found the people she needed to fix the world and brought them back with her. And she didn't die. She came back for him, just like she promised.

Phil doesn’t quite understand, he’s surrounded by people smarter than him, scientists and engineers. Daisy is talking about this loophole, because what happens in this world affects your real body, like how if you die in here you die out there. So they figured out a way to hack that connection.

He doesn’t know why he has to go first.

“Your hand,” Daisy explains. She has taken him aside, so they can talk without the others hearing. “All of you will be exhausted when you wake up, none of you will be able to fight against the people doing this. But your prosthetic… you can send a signal to SHIELD, so our team will know where to look.”

“If I still have it, that is.”

“I'm an optimist,” Daisy says. “You'll figure it out.”

He nods.

“It’s dangerous,” she adds.

Phil remembers bravery. The other guy, the Phil Coulson gradually taking over his brain, he’s brave, or at least he knows how to fake it. Phil is not.

“Hey, look, your poker face is coming back,” Daisy tells him, lifting her fingers to his cheek for the briefest moment. “You always did that so others wouldn’t worry.”

“What about you? Are you going to wake up?”

For a moment a shadow crosses her face, and then she smiles like it's nothing. He remembers this too.

“Sure, I just need to make sure everyone is out before I can leave,” she says.

Phil doesn't want to go. Especially he doesn't want to go to a world if Daisy won't be there on the other side waiting for him.

He's also not sure it's _him_ the one waking up on the other side.

“What will happen when I wake up? Will I remember my life here?”

It might not have been a great life (lonely, for the most part; easy and simple, which he wanted, before meeting Agent Johnson) but it's still his.

“I don’t know,” she tells him, honest. Too honest.

“And what about this?” Phil gestures around them. “Will I remember the last few days?”

“Coulson…” he gives her a look. “Phil, I honestly don’t know. All I know is that you - that Coulson out there, in the real world, will die if he doesn’t wake up. And that we need him to save the world.”

“So if I don’t remember this world, then it would be like… like I die.”

“I guess so.”

“Okay.”

He guesses the real Coulson wouldn't mind dying, to save the world. Phil has seen Daisy, she's the same, they must have that in common.

Daisy takes his hand in hers. She does it very slowly and carefully, like she is not sure the touch is welcome. Did the Coulson out there not like it when she touched him? Phil vaguely remembers rejecting it, rejecting her, once, but he doesn't think it's because he didn't like it.

In any case, what fool the other Phil Coulson must be.

“I’m scared,” he tells her.

She squeezes her hand.

“I know,” she says. “Whatever happens… I’ll be out there, with you.”

“I...”

He's not sure he can do this.

He is not a hero.

He doesn't want to disappear. His life is small and full of lies and ugly things he's done, but he wants to hold on, he doesn't want to just... go away.

“Look, you won’t die,” Daisy tells him, not letting go of his hand. “Even if you don’t remember who you are, you are you. I know that, I’ve seen that this last few days. You didn’t have his memories but _you are_ the Phil Coulson I knew in the real world. Kind and charming and brave. That crazy robot couldn’t change that when she changed your memories. You’re always you. I know it.”

How can she say those things?

And how could there be a version of him out there that makes a woman like Daisy say those things?

Phil shrugs. “Well, in case I don’t remember any of this…”

Daisy tilts her head a moment, not understanding his words at first. Phil gets his hand free and he grabs Daisy's head, cupping and lifting her chin while he brings his mouth down on hers, swallowing the soft _Oh_ of her surprise.

Phil doesn't remember kissing anyone like this.

In this world or the real one.


	5. it was all real

As she walks towards him a wave of relief engulfs Daisy.

Now this looks like Coulson. The way he moves, his vibrations, everything. He's here again, and it's real. It's all real.

Of course it's two in the morning and he is in the shooting range, shooting at paper targets, so it means something is wrong, but it also means he's recovered from his injuries.

He senses the moment she enters the room, of course. And wasn't part of him hoping she'd find him here, shooting round after round, just making sure he remembers how to? Part of him was dreading it, too.

“Perfect stance,” Daisy says from a distance, walking right behind him.

He puts the gun aside, not looking directly at Daisy at first. He's avoided her eyes since they've been back and hey, Daisy gets it, she doesn't want to get in the way, maybe he is ashamed of the things he said to her in the Framework, she's cool with it – well, she is not cool with Coulson not talking to her, obviously, but she is going to give him as much space as he needs.

“I had a good teacher,” he says humbly.

“I’m sorry. I was only trying to get you to remember.”

He gives her a soft smile of understanding. She has the feeling she hasn't seen that smile in a while.

“I know,” he says, not wanting to sound ungrateful. She kept him alive. He was basically a dead weight and she kept him alive. His pride a bit hurt of course – he wishes he could say he is a better man than that, but he isn't. “I’ve been a SHIELD agent for over thirty years. It was sobering to be needing shooting lessons all of the sudden.”

Daisy walks around him, closer, leaning on the wall that separates the booth from the next one.

“If it helps, you were a quick study,” she tells him.

“Not quick enough.”

“Coulson…”

He shakes his head. He doesn't be let off the hook. 

“I’m sorry. You were all alone in there. You needed my help and I was there for you. You had to take care of a… a stranger.”

“It wasn’t your fault. Nothing that happened in there, Hydra, what you were teaching your students... nothing is your fault. They were controlling your brain.”

“I still left you alone,” he says, shrugging a bti.

“That’s not completely true.”

Daisy wishes he could see that – that underneath the mind control and the tweed she always knew he was there, she always knew _who_ was with her, even if he didn't, but look at how he was there for her, every step of the way, letting himself be dragged into her world of danger and scary things. Just because he would never leave her alone. Daisy knows there's no version of him who would.

“Sure, my alter ego was very helpful. I was there, I know the truth,” Coulson makes a gesture with his hand over his eyes, pushing his finger to the bridge of his nose, mocking the other Coulson's habit of figeting with his glasses. He looks frustrated by his other him, and he shares a tiny smile with Daisy.

“At least you believed me,” she says.

He sighs, leaning on the table. Her body language opening it up. To her.

 

“It was weird,” he is saying, almost in wonderment of it all. “I had a whole other life inside my head. When I was in there it felt real.” Daisy nods, not looking at him. “But now it’s just like some movie I’ve watched. They don’t feel like memories.”

“Personally I’m glad it worked different with me,” she comments. “And I don’t have any of that world’s Daisy’s memories.”

Coulson expression’s becomes blank then immediately horrified.

“Oh god, _Ward_ ,” he breathes out, like the mere name makes him sick. “Did he - did he hurt you?”

Daisy snorts, lifting her chin. “He _tried_. Remember?”

Coulson nods. She must have been scared, back there, of course. With Ward, and without anyone recognizing her, she had no help. But it’s Daisy, she probably doesn’t want to tell them that.

“I’d say the whole thing had its cathartic moments,” she adds, smirking. Like it had been nothing when they both had to stop a brainless piece of software with grant Ward's face bent on destroying them. Like she didn't get shot and almost bled to death in _Phil Coulson's_ car. Like Coulson doesn't still remember being choked by the hands of a man he believed he had killed with his own hands.

“Yeah,” is all he says, low and non-committal.

They stay like that for a bit, arms crossed, in an easy silence.

I've missed this, Daisy thinks.

I've missed this, Coulson thinks.

“Why didn’t you tell me who you were at first?” he says, remembering her ruse. Smart, of course. She was in a strange land and beyond whatever he was in the real world the Phil Coulson back there had the map to navigate it. Very smart. Making him work towards his own freedom and survival, without him knowing it.

Daisy looks away for a moment, as if she were ashamed of tricking him. 

“I was going to. I looked for you first,” she tells him. The way she says it makes Coulson’s heart feel sharp and heavy. “But I called your name and I saw in your eyes you had no idea who I was. I had to improvise - I couldn’t risk you thinking I was some crazy chick. I had to have you on my side.”

And she managed to do exactly that. Or maybe somehow, Coulson thinks, he is always going to be on her side. No matter what reality.

He is looking at her with weirdly wide eyes. Daisy shrugs. There are probably a million ways in which she could have handed the situation differently, but at least everybody came out of it alive.

“I'm sorry I...”

He gestures.

It's obvious what he means.

“Kissed me?” Daisy fills in the gaps, almost enjoying his embarrassment.

Hey, their relationship has survived some heavy stuff, like lies and mind-control and amnesia, it can survive a little kiss.

“Don't be. It was a very nice kiss,” she jokes.

Coulson would groan in protest, but this is Daisy, he knows she only makes light of the things she takes very seriously, just so people won't know how affected she is.

He is more worried about the other thing than about the kiss, about assuming from her words and his memories that they had been a couple in the outside world.

“And I'm sorry I was so weird with you,” he says.

Weird? He kicks himself mentally. This is not a proper apology.

“Don't worry about it, it was-” she is about to say _flattering_ but that would be embarrassing. Phil Coulson assuming they were in love, as absurd as the idea was, stroke her ego quite a bit. “It was fine.”

“I need to explain why I said those things, I-”

“Coulson, seriously, it's okay, you don't have to justify-”

“That grilled cheese dish… it was a family recipe.”

“...okay.”

“I changed it a bit, but it was basically something my grandmother taught me how to make when I was a kid.”

“That’s nice.” She can picture little Phil in his grandmother's kitchen. She feels a pang of jealousy, the old usual jealousy, because she never had any of that.

“In my family food recipes are like an heirloom,” he says. He smiles at the expression. “She used to say _food is a measure of affection_. My grandmother could get very Jewish about food sometimes.”

“Is this the fake memories or…?”

“No, no,” he tells Daisy. “Before that. This is my real family.”

“Ah.”

“The soup recipe was kind of a big deal, a real secret,” Coulson goes on. “Grilled cheese was the first thing my mom cooked for my dad. What I’m trying to say is - that’s why I reacted that way when you told me I had made it for you. Because when I was young I always associated it with love.”

It dawns on Daisy, what he means, and she feels heartbroken for him, that he had to-

“I’m sorry you wasted it on me,” she says, looking at her feet.

It doesn't even shock him anymore that Daisy's reaction is _this_. It still cuts through him like a knife.

“That’s the thing, thinking about it now, I don’t think I wasted it. I think I cooked it for exactly who I was supposed to.”

He had never showed any sign of interest (not really, he flirted, but that didn't count) in fours years and now in four days Daisy finds herself being kissed by Coulson for a second time.

Of course he remembers the kiss in the Framework but it's not the same. He was only half himself back then, he remembers and it was him, but he wasn't in control, so to speak. But seeing Daisy through the eyes of the other Coulson, and kissing her like that, had changed everything for him. He was down here in the shooting range tonight not just because he couldn't sleep, or because he was avoiding her – all these things are true – but because he was trying to remember Daisy and himself in the shooting range of that other place, how she had taught him, how she had put her hands of his hips and lead him. It had shed a new light on every interaction she had ever had with Daisy. 

He is kissing her very passionately and Daisy doesn’t want him to stop, but she needs him to stop. She grabs his collar and draws him away gently, so he wouldn’t think she was rejecting him.

“Are you sure? I told you the truth back in the framework, you’re very important. I can’t mess with this, not if you're not sure.”

Does that mean _she is_ sure? His heart leaps painfully.

“You also said that I was always myself, even if I didn’t know it,” he says. “You are right. There are things they couldn’t change, even when they altered my brain. Even when I didn’t know who I was, I still fell for you.”

For a moment she thinks he must be making fun of her, with all this romantic talk, these words no one has ever said to her before, these words she knows she shouldn’t get to hear, she doesn't deserve, but then she realizes Coulson would never make fun of her like this, so he must be telling the truth.

And if he's telling the truth... “Oh, God,” she lets out, moaning loudly from joy and incredulity as she grabs him tight by the back of the neck and pulls him towards her. This time is perfect, with the doubts gone (not all of them, like “is this going to ruin the most important of my life?” and stuff like that, but she can deal).

Until now he had kissed Daisy.

But Daisy had never kissed him.

It makes Coulson want to tell her how _Phil_ in the other world fell in love with her on the spot, in his classroom, and that he could feel it, trapped inside that person, he could feel it because _he already knew_ how falling in love with her felt like, because he'd already lived through that, he fell on the spot, on the Bus, in that cell, on that interrogation. The way Daisy kisses makes him want to blurt out all of this and more.

When they break it off it's only because they need to come up for some air, almost laughing, happy (their tentative version of), looking at each other, looking drunk, glistening.

“Do I kiss better than him?” Coulson asks, teasing, but with a distinctly genuine undercurrent.

“Are you jealous of _him_?”

He kissed you first, Coulson thinks. But he knows Daisy was seeing him and only him the whole time, that she made not distinction.

She thinks Coulson should be the last man to feel insecure about this stuff, of all people. But she also knows insecurity doesn't work like that.

“I like this,” she says, brushing her nose against his bottom lip and then look up to meet his eyes. “It's better now you know who I am, now that you remember me...”

Some unspoken sadness crosses her glance and Coulson wishes there's anything he could do to make it up to her, how he left her alone – she said he didn't, but he knows she still was lonely and scared and overwhelmed back there. The fact that she ended saving the day, saving everybody, saving the world, doesn't make it any less sad. He doesn't want to ever leave her alone again.

Coulson wraps his hands around her waist and pushes her against the glass, pressing their bodies together for the first time. It's shocking, they've never been this close physically (obviously, _evidently_ , huh, when she feels Coulson's erection against her thigh) and it's exhilarating and not-scary and not-stressful, she guesses it's how sex it's supposed to be.

He lifts her by the hips, until she is sitting on the range table and he is between her legs.

“You’re going to lose your perfect shooting stance,” she teases.

He groans in reply.

“Coulson... _Phil_ ,” she frowns, it doesn't feel right.

“Coulson is fine.” For now, he thinks. No need to rush.

“Coulson, I love you, and I will love you _on any surface_ you, choose but...”

“Bed?” he asks, with a winning smile.

“Please.”

“Yours or mine?” he asks.

Daisy grabs his hand. He spreads his fingers and holds hers back. She draws a long breath, happy just to touch Coulson knowing that her touch is welcome (not to be crass but again, he does have a hard-on, let's not forget).

“Yours,” she says.

“Really?”

Your things, she thinks.

Your smell, she thinks.

“I've missed you,” she says.

Coulson nods, helping her down from the table.

I love you on any surface _too_ , he thinks.

I love you on any-

“I love you.”


End file.
